New Pornographers - Challengers

The New Pornographers return with their fourth album and their first recorded outside of bassist John Collins' basement studio.

Challengers is airier, more spacious and more relaxed than its jackhammer predecessors, the sound of songwriters Carl Newman and Dan Bejar stretching out.

In a recent Pitchfork interview, Newman rejected the 'power-pop' label and suggested 'power-folk' instead, and several songs on the new album live up to it, particularly the luscious Neko Case fronted ballads Go Places and Challengers.

That's not to say the band doesn't play anthems - it certainly does, but a rousing track like Myriad Harbour is more imbued with the ghosts of Fred Neil and Viv Stanshall than with the new-wave songsters of yore.

• My Rights Versus Yours
• All the Old Showstoppers
• Challengers
• Myriad Harbour
• All the Things That Go to Make Heaven and Earth
• Failsafe
• Unguided
• Entering White Cecilia
• Go Places
• Mutiny, I Promise You
• Adventures in Solitude
• The Spirit of Giving